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At approximately 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 14, Jim "G.G." Laughlin was toasting marshmallows over a barbecue pit with his 7-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter. Laughlin, an electronica DJ, was scheduled to spin records later that evening, during...

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In the "good old days" (we're talking 1995 here), you could count on a few bands that were always certain to pack 'em in down in the basement of the old Cicero's, and one of the hardest-rocking and most entertaining of the lot was Omaha's Frontier Tr...

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Skateboarding and punk rock have a mutual history as tangled, sweaty and bombastic as a pair of masked Mexican wrestlers locked in a grudge match. Take one away, and it's just a wild-eyed guy flailing about in the public arena; put 'em together, and ...

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If you've lived in the St. Louis metro area for any length of time, you've seen the less-than subtle fliers made by the Conformists. You know the ones: a pair of identical cats hanging side-by-side in nooses, photocopied past clarity into some sort o...

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With no shortage of talent but an abundance of hard luck, Billy Joe Shaver has forged a career as one of country music's greatest songwriters by scribbling and weeping whiskey-soaked honky-tonk masterpieces for decades. Appreciated more by his fellow...

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In the Washington Avenue entertainment district, an unlikely alliance is forming between the police department and club owners. Just last winter, the fuzz started cracking down hard on the so-called rave scene, harassing promoters, shutting down part...

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Scottish quartet Idlewild is living proof that touring actually works. The band has been relentlessly driving, sweating, playing, driving, sweating, playing over the last year, supporting the wonderful 100 Broken Windows. A collection of melancholy g...

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After a brief prelude, delicately, almost toyingly played on classical guitar, the percussion, drums and bass swell up, churning and churning, then spilling over the levee separating Latin and Persian music, classical and jazz forms. That's the sound...

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Those familiar with Michelle Willson's music know there's a simple explanation behind the goofily sinister name of her backing band, the Evil Gal Festival Orchestra. When Willson, a Massachusetts native, started singing the blues, one of her signatur...

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Fronted by one of the most seductive singers in rock music, the Bloomington-based Mary Janes approach alternative country with an orchestral concept, rolling out waves of guitar feedback, pedal steel, violin, accordion, mandolin and banjo. But it's e...

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The popularity of tough-nosed hip-hop continues to present challenges to R&B vocalists. Soulsters who go too heavy on sentiment, eschewing the sort of musical nods that might enhance their credibility with 'bangers, risk coming across as weak, pass ...

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If awakened to the strains of the Songcatcher soundtrack, a mysteriously sleeping Rip van Winkle from the Appalachians would be shocked: "Look what they've done to our songs, Ma! They've changed the rhythms; they've made them louder, with voices that...

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The online DJ collective Dublab, launched in 1999 from a Hollywood storefront by a bunch of beat-loving USC scrubs, has taken successful root in part because of its freeform programming, which lets the human element shine through the blips, glitches ...

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This much was clear: She wasn't coming back on her own. "Where's Lu?" a woman, apparently a manager, was asking. "We're late." Lu was last seen standing behind the outdoor stage, just after the rain had soaked the Laclede's Landing parking lot, flipp...

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Few things can lure Radar Station to a house of worship, but one of those things, it turns out, is MC Hammer. When we receive a fax from Minister Larry Rodgers, the self-proclaimed hype man of gospel music, alerting us to an upcoming appearance by on...

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In past concerts, Janet Jackson has invited a guy from the audience to join her onstage. He's strapped into a chair for the duration of a song while Jackson dances, cooes and gyrates her way around him. This virtual lap dance is guaranteed to leave a...

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Ready to get your fiesta on? You'd better be, because your man R. Kelly is a-comin' to town. Chances are, if you're drunk off in the club, you'll feel his shit. And more than likely, if you're a moneymaking thug, you'll feel his shit. The Windy City'...

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Lineup changes are all too common in rock bands, as members come and go, succumbing to tour stress, personal friction and the ever-popular "creative differences." As significant as these shakeups seem to the participants, though, the only change the ...

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Still recovering from last week's marathon of patriotism, pork steaks and powder burns? You'd better recover in a hurry, because the 2001 Sam's Club Rib America Festival kicks off a four-day run on Thursday at the Soldiers Memorial. As the name impli...